Across Europe, Syriza’s victory was welcomed (and deplored) as a blow to austerity

The Economist

SYRIZA’S unequivocal victory in Sunday’s Greek elections reverberated all over Europe. It had been widely assumed that the left-wing populists and their charismatic young leader, Alexis Tsipras (pictured), would win a plurality of the votes, but the margin of victory was at the high end of expectations. In other European countries, Syriza’s win gave inspiration to populist anti-austerity parties on the left and right. European governments, meanwhile, issued diplomatic congratulations to the victors, while quietly worrying that the deals struck during years of negotiations, to rescue Greece from default and keep it in the euro zone, will now be torn open.

Syriza’s winning margin over the incumbent New Democracy party of Antonis Samaras fell just short of an outright governing majority. Including the 50-seat bonus which Greek election rules grant to the party with the largest share of the vote, Syriza mustered 149 seats in the 300-member parliament. Mr Tsipras moved swiftly to consolidate his victory. On Monday morning he launched coalition talks with an unlikely but willing candidate: Panos Kammenos, the leader of the Independent Greeks, a small right-wing party. Mr Kammenos quickly announced that the two parties had struck a deal. Although opposed to Syriza in their overall ideology, the right-wing Independent Greeks share Syriza’s antipathy to the terms of Greece’s bail-out, and its attendant dose of stringent government austerity.

With 13 seats, Mr Kammenos could provide a workable majority for a Syriza government. One Syriza aide says Mr Tsipras might even announce his cabinet by Monday evening. Mr Tsipras was also due hold talks later on Monday with Stavros Theodorakis, leader of To Potami (The River), a centre-left party entering parliament for the first time. Mr Theodorakis would refuse to join a Syriza-led government but could provide additional parliamentary support.

For the rest of Europe, the question is how strongly Mr Tsipras will press his demands for a renegotiation of the bail-out programme agreed with the so-called “troika” of the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the IMF. Mr Tsipras has demanded a significant haircut in Greece’s national debt, and has vowed to rehire laid-off government workers, raise the minimum wage, and hike government spending to pay for free electricity and health care for the poor. That uncompromising anti-austerity agenda has inspired many Europeans, while giving their governments the shivers.

The most important response will be that of Germany. Angela Merkel, the chancellor, is reviled in Greece for her leading role in negotiating the bail-out’s terms, and has been diplomatic about Mr Tsipras’s victory to avoid further provocation. But other politicians from her coalition are doing the talking for her. Günther Oettinger, a commissioner in Brussels and a member of Mrs Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democrat party, told German public radio that although nobody wants Greece to exit the euro, another debt haircut is out of the question. Hans-Peter Friedrich of the CSU, the Christian Democrats’ Bavarian sister party, urged the Greeks to continue with austerity because German taxpayers should not bear their burdens. Even the centre-left Social Democrats in Mrs Merkel’s coalition joined the chorus. Thomas Oppermann, their parliamentary leader, said Greece would do better to fight corruption at home than to break its commitments abroad.

Only The Left, a party on Germany’s ex-communist political fringe, cheered on Syriza’s plans to end the spending cuts they consider a social disaster. But The Left’s role is marginal in German politics. More influential is the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party founded in 2013 that calls for dissolving the euro zone. AfD is currently trying to decide whether to remain primarily a Eurosceptic party or become a socially conservative movement with xenophobic tendencies. Any perceived softness toward Greece by the government would boost AfD’s appeal. This further limits Mrs Merkel’s willingness to make concessions to Syriza.

The picture is very different in France, where Marine Le Pen and her Eurosceptic, far-right National Front are riding high in the opinion polls, in part by opposing austerity and economic reforms demanded by Brussels. In a classic example of right- and left-wing alignment, Ms Le Pen has backed Syriza on the basis of its opposition to austerity, though she has always criticised its relatively tolerant immigration policies. On Monday she hailed Syriza’s victory, saying the Greek people had delivered a “monstrous democratic slap” to the EU. France’s president, François Hollande, offered formal congratulations as well. But Syriza’s win could present Mr Hollande with a headache by emboldening the left-wing rebels within his Socialist party, who consider the current prime minister, Manuel Valls, and his finance minister, Emmanuel Macron, unforgivably liberal.

Within the euro zone, Italy is the country whose position is closest to Greece’s. It faces a debt load of 132% of GDP and has its own populist left-wing party, the Five Star Movement, which like Syriza clamours for an end to austerity. Italy’s centre-left prime minister, Matteo Renzi, was the first foreign leader to congratulate Mr Tsipras on his win. Yet Mr Renzi has generated growing political opposition with his ambitious agenda of liberal reforms, and his foes have been appropriating Mr Tsipras’s win as their own. “Our Eurosceptic vision will continue to be confirmed everywhere,” declared the Five Star Movement in its response.

Mr Tsipras has said he is not anti-European and does not want Greece to leave the euro, and not all of the parties welcoming Syriza’s win were Eurosceptic. For some on the left, Mr Tsipras’s win offers the prospect of a closer EU that does not impose austerity regimes on member states with debt problems. Nicola Vendola of Italy’s Left Ecology Liberty party hoped Syriza’s win would set Europe on the road to true unification, including a single tax system and a single job market.

But in most of Europe Mr Tsipras’s win was taken as a defeat for Brussels, especially in the European capitals where such a defeat is most welcome. For the Kremlin, which sees the disintegration of the euro zone and the weakening of the European Union as among its main strategic interests, the Greek election results were a gift. Vladimir Putin was quick to congratulate Alexis Tsipras on his victory, and Russian state television gleefully reported that Syriza’s landslide means the end of the EU’s hold over Greece, which “brought the country nothing but unemployment and misery”.